Forum:Merge?
Greetings, I'm supergeeky1 from the Star Wars Games Wiki. We recently discovered this wiki and after careful thought, the other users and I feel that it would benefit both the Star Wars Galaxies Wikia and SWGames if our two communities were to merge as one, large gaming encyclopedia. Before I get into details, I'd like to get the largest factor out of the way first; SWGames currently has approx. 2,000 articles. While that may seem small in comparison to your 6,000, SWGames is more "strict" in what type of content we allow. That is, we prefer more organized content. We're also somewhat limited in our amount of active users. Now that that's out of the way, we've also noticed the Galaxy Wikia's also a bit limited in its amount of active users. That being said, with the combination of these two wikis, the benefits of the merge would without a doubt draw in new interest. We've merged with two other wikis before (the KotOR Wiki and the Battlefront Wiki) and the results we're quite impressive. The site managed to double the amount of articles in a very short period of time and the active users increased by the day. One of the things that really drew us to this wiki is the fact that our articles on the Galaxies games are, quite frankly, very crappy. We have almost no content about the subject and what little content we do have, it could be greatly improved. By merging the two sites together, the articles could be brought up to decency giving the site a better chance to grow properly. Think of it this way: it would be like your site gaining 2,000 articles in an instant. We realize that SWGalaxies Wikia has already been through one move before and that's why we'd like to offer to merge the articles over ourselves. Your users wouldn't have to lay a finger on them. Beyond that, all you'd have to do is leave a notice on this wiki that the two have been merged and new users may find the content on SWGames. The admins on SWGalaxies would be granted administratorship on SWGames and have the same rights they currently have here, although if you have any inactive administrators you'd prefer not having sysop abilities, said users should be left out for security reasons. If you have anymore questions, feel free to leave me a message. Cheers! — supergeeky1 \ / (''My Talk'') 19:43, 22 September 2008 (UTC) :I'm not a sysop, but I do have a couple of questions. Can you be more clear about "strict" and how it would impact our existing articles and new articles? Also are you or your sysops familiar with MMO style of gaming? Valtier 05:04, 23 September 2008 (UTC) ::By strict, I mean we generally prefer to keep things organized and easy to read as possible. That being said, we don't allow articles unless they follow our Manual of Style. However, articles are very easy to assemble in that manner, assuming that your articles aren't properly organized which I'm sure they are. And yes, I know at least half of our current sysops play MMOs. — supergeeky1 \ / (''My Talk'') 20:43, 23 September 2008 (UTC) :::I think a manual of style is good. However, MMOs are dynamic and certain aspects of the game are not easily accessible. Sometimes our casual users are uninterested in conforming to a manual of style, but are willing to upload an informative screenshot with a stub. SWG has an in-game browser which makes SWGWiki easy to access and quickly upload small pieces of information and quickly resume gameplay. I am curious what would happen to these sorts of articles in a more strict environment. My personal preference is to allow these types of articles until they can be improved by more avid users who are familiar with a MoS. ::::I'm a bureaucrat on SWGames like supergeeky1. I am often correcting users that make edits that don't follow the Manual of Style, so we don't just delete that sort of content, what I'm trying to say is that we can most likely compromise with this issue, I'm sure supergeeky1 will add to this. Hunterj | My talk 19:52, 27 September 2008 (UTC) :::Another concern I have is how accessible popular SWGWiki articles would be on SWGames. Something I've worked with Drade on is restructuring some of our more popular articles so they are between one and two clicks of the main page. This has helped increased article visits considerably. A merger with SWGames would add at least one more layer to these articles. I'd be interested in hearing what strategy you use for popular page navigation, accessibility and how SWGWiki articles would be incorporated from the main page of SWGames. Valtier 02:30, 26 September 2008 (UTC) ::::Again, I'm sure we can compromise with this issue, however we would add a section on the side bar, under top games that would link to Star Wars Galaxies, and could have an extra list that slides out with a list of the best Star Wars Galaxies articles. This would make the best pages accessible with one click from any page, I'm sure supergeeky1 will be able to give some suggestions about the main page links as well. Hunterj | My talk 19:52, 27 September 2008 (UTC) :I must say I'm not in favour of such a merger. Since I started here my main aim has been to try to organise articles in a more logical and efficient manner to make it easier for users to find what they're looking for. As part of this I've merged some articles, and just outright deleted many more because they referred to an older version of the game and were completely irrelevant to the current one. While this has been unpopular with those that prefer the old game, it means that new players aren't completely confused by information that bears no resemblance to what they are playing, as I was when I first started. :I've also deleted articles that about Star Wars characters and events that aren't even in the game, because while they may have been interesting, they are also completely unnecessary. :Basically, whilst more non-SWG articles may be good from the point of view of building a concise wiki, it would be bad from the point of view of actual players of SWG, which is why I am against it. Drade 16:31, 26 September 2008 (UTC) ::It's not my decision to make, but I can see pros and cons to merging wikis. More editors is good, editors with coding skills is even better. But you are correct that articles could be confusing. The article on Jedi in SWGames is about the Jedi in SWG and Battlefront. Imo, those articles should be split and disambig. ::WoWWiki appears to have incorporated articles for the Warcraft I, II and III. So, there is evidence that an MMO wiki and other game wikis can coexist. However, World of Warcraft remains the dominant focus of WoWWiki from the perspective of number of articles and navigation prominence. One thought would be to have tabbed portals like WoWWiki has on their main page. Maybe we could get more insight from their admins? Valtier 18:18, 26 September 2008 (UTC) :::We could split articles up I guess, at the minute we just have separate sections for each game. Yet again, I'm sure supergeeky1 will address this issue in a more precise and constructive way! Hunterj | My talk 19:52, 27 September 2008 (UTC) ::::Just to let you know, supergeeky1 is currently having some computer problems, and may take a while to respond to these queries. Hunterj | My talk 18:17, 2 October 2008 (UTC) :::::Per Hunterj, I've been having various computer difficulties but fortunately I have limited access at the moment. I've carefully read all of your concerns and I can understand them. I personally would hate to have SWGames negatively affected by a bad merge. I would be in favor of creating a portal. Whilst it would mean SWGames articles would have to be split up significantly and move away from the traditional wiki format, I feel the benefits of such a move would be outstanding and make articles more easy for users to locate. However, being as our wiki (like yours) is more of a "democracy", if you will, than a "dictatorship", a vote would have to be passed in order for that change to go into effect. When I said we're more strict, what I meant by that was that we usually prefer to have more organized content than some other wikis allows. However, just because an article isn't organized doesn't mean we'll just delete it. We strive to continuously improve such articles. On the subject of popular articles, a feature that's not used as often as we would like is the Featured Article system. Additionally, we've begun work on creating the Good Article feature, which allows promotion of more popular articles that don't exactly qualify to be featured on the main page. And on a side note, I apologize for taking so long to respond to these concerns. I'm hoping I'll have my computer up and running normally again within the next several days. Cheers! — supergeeky1 \ / (''My Talk'') 17:44, 7 October 2008 (UTC) ::::::Star Wars Games is not like Wikipedia where we just delete bad articles because they are not large enough to meet their standards. At SWGames, active admins, like myself, usually patrol the recent changes daily and make changes to these kind of articles when we find content that can be improved. I am sure the merging of these two wikis would greatly benefit both communities. However the choice is up to you. Let[[User_talk:LethalReflex|'hal']] 21:25, 8 October 2008 (UTC)